Next time, I'm sticking my finger in the socket

[Randall]

Twice in one week -- less than, even! -- a power outage has killed one of my routers. First it was the one in the office. Now my home router has joined the choir invisible, too.

Eerily similar symptoms: The lights are on but nobody's home. No login, no internet, no DHCP ... can't even see it on the network.

These were two different brands but date back to the same era. They even have serial ports (!) for emergency resuscitation, but I can't find my null modem cable. Odds are good that it wouldn't work anyway.

I was lucky to have a spare on hand in both cases, but this is just too freaky.

Argh.

Randall

[Wassercrats]

Weren't they plugged into a surge protector? Can you take advantage of the surge protector's warranty?

[Andilinks]

Weren't they plugged into a surge protector?Surge protectors don't protect against outages, just surge. Battery back-up would work but the cheap ones don't work well. My $100 APC unit had way too many noisy false positives and is now just a very heavy surge protector.

[Randall]

The first incident may have involved a surge, but (stupidly) we didn't have the router plugged into a surge protector. I wasn't home when it happened again tonight, so I have no idea what was going on -- and that one was plugged into a surge protector.

Can't understand why the routers got fried, while ten million other pieces of equippment came through in one piece. Bizarre.

Back in the pre-broadband era I watched two dial-up modems get their brains scrambled by a lightning strike down the street. But this time there was a DSL modem in between -- and both of them seem to be just fine. And there was no lightning, either.

Aliens, I tell you. Aliens...

Randall

[TVB]

Ummm....did you do ipconfig /reset?

I seem to have to reset everything after a power failure and the symptons are often the same...lights are on, but no one is home. The above from the command line does the trick everytime.

Betsy

[louyovin]

But this time there was a DSL modem in between -- and both of them seem to be just fine. And there was no lightning, either.

Aliens, I tell you. Aliens...

Randall
Yes, must be the aliens. We had similar experience with VPN router on Cable access. Twice they went out after power failure and neither time did the cable modem (really a router) crap out. We figured the surge protector was gone. Wound up getting another one from the cable company, they said they would replace anything that got fried. As per usual, once you have the insurance you don't need it.
The good news was that the router manufacturer sent a replacement overnight with no charge. Makes the yearly fee ($65) seem trivial. Also made me glad that I had a backup of the configuration settings. The VPN stuff is non-trivial.

[louyovin]

Eerily similar symptoms: The lights are on but nobody's home. No login, no internet, no DHCP ... can't even see it on the network.
Randall
We had similar with our Sonicwalls. On those you can check the ports (WAN/LAN) by connecting with a crossover cable, the link lights should light. On one occasion I "fixed" it by resetting to factory defaults (hidden button) and then had to reload new firmware and settings. On the other 2 occasions, we had to replace. The Linksys and such routers are so cheap now it is simple to keep spares. In fact, on our main site, I have a spare ADSL router and Linksys router in case needed. If I replace the Sonicwall with the Linksys, we lose the VPN tunnel to the other office but all else goes on while we wait for replacement.

[Mandi]

I have no advice, but can offer sympathy. I've been trying to upgrade our home router to a new box for over a month, and keep getting units that simply won't power on in the first place. (At least the old one is still perfectly functional - it just lacks a couple features I want, like the ability to schedule port access/denial per machine, not that I'm naming any (***cough cough night owl teenagers***) names.

[Randall]

Ummm....did you do ipconfig /reset? That won't help when the router drops off the network. The PCs were fine -- they just couldn't talk to each other anymore because the box in between fell into a coma. :dunno: The Linksys and such routers are so cheap now it is simple to keep spares. And I am truly thankful for that. I just hope that the new Cisco wireless router at my other job doesn't meet with a bad end, because that's a $300 replacement -- and you don't want to know how long the vendor spent setting it up.

Randall

[sheila]

I have no advice, but can offer sympathy. I've been trying to upgrade our home router to a new box for over a month, and keep getting units that simply won't power on in the first place. (At least the old one is still perfectly functional - it just lacks a couple features I want, like the ability to schedule port access/denial per machine, not that I'm naming any (***cough cough night owl teenagers***) names.Sounds ummm strangely familiar. ;)